About

Justin Garcia is a Jersey City-based guitarist, composer, bandleader, and producer whose instrumental music brings together Latin rhythms, psychedelic rock, jazz improvisation, and American roots music. A first-generation Cuban-American, Garcia draws from the musical traditions of his heritage while creating a sound that moves freely between bolero, cumbia, Latin jazz, surf, soul, country, and psychedelia.

As a guitarist and collaborator, Garcia has performed and recorded throughout the New York and New Jersey music scene, working across original music, roots and Americana, jazz, Latin music, and experimental performance. He is a member of the New Jersey roots/jam collective Widely Grown and has collaborated with artists and ensembles including Earthquake Lights, Echo Bloom and Giselle Bellas.

Garcia’s work as a bandleader centers on an increasingly cinematic and improvisational approach to instrumental music. His debut full-length album, De El Vacío (2024), established a personal language built around atmosphere, guitar-driven composition, and Latin and psychedelic influences. His 2025 EP Luz De La Luna expanded that vocabulary through seven instrumental compositions drawing on bolero, cumbia, Latin jazz, ambient music, and psychedelic rock. The EP received coverage from publications including Obscure Sound, which described Garcia’s music as moving between jazz-inflected introspection and psychedelic rock. Garcia released the single Fandango in 2026.

Beyond his recorded work, Garcia develops multimedia and interdisciplinary performances. In 2025 he served as musical director and producer of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, a live score to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 film presented by Art House Productions and The Latest Noise. He has also presented his music through live performance and multimedia programming at Art House Productions, The Latest Noise, Fox & Crow, and other regional venues.

Garcia is a 2025–26 recipient of the Jersey City Arts Council’s Individual Artist Fellowship and currently curates UNPLUGGED: Jersey City at Art House Productions, developing programs that connect local musicians and audiences across jazz, Latin, hip-hop, R&B, and other contemporary traditions.

His work occupies a space between composition and improvisation, tradition and experimentation, with the guitar serving as the central thread connecting the worlds he explores.